


We Did It

by lantia4ever



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angry Tony Stark, Angst, Badass Wong, Fluff and Humor, Hurt Stephen Strange, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Stephen Strange, M/M, Never compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Prompt Fic, Protective Tony Stark, Reunions, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantia4ever/pseuds/lantia4ever
Summary: Just moments after defeating Thanos and getting everyone back from the Snap, Tony finds there's one particular person who is not only nowhere to be found, but in fact fled the scene as soon as he could.Too bad he happens to know where this elusive wizard lives and isn't above breaking down doors.Ironstrange Week 2019 May ~ Day 5 - Reunion





	We Did It

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! <3 
> 
> Enjoy this little twist on the post-Endgame reunion of a certain wizard and a certain genius engineer, all with a spoonful of angst but not THAT kind of angst. Because Endgame didn't happen :) Repeat after me: it didn't happen. *hypnotizing the entire world with the sentence*

Tony doesn’t know what he expected. After almost a year – a good part of which he spent lost and dying in space and the other part holed up in his lab – here they are.

Thanos dead. Infinity gauntlet destroyed. Half of the universe snapped back into existence.

All this time building up to this very moment, he thought it would be…different. That it would _feel_ different. More…climactic? Relieving? Profound?

Yet for a blissful moment, he just doesn’t feel anything. Anything at all.  

After going through an entire assortment of high-strung emotions this past year, it’s as far from disappointing as it can get though – it’s exhilarating. A breeze of fresh air after only breathing smoke and dust for so, so long.

The nothingness would have usually been suffocating and scary. Instead, Tony takes one deep, shuddering breath and laughs. High-pitched, little crazy and most of all – genuine.

And the next moment he has a handful of a teen spider in his arms and the dam of emotions finally breaks – only this time it’s not the horror dam, it’s the relief.

The tears that sprung from his eyes are for once completely made of happiness.

“You did it, Mr. Stark!” Peter mumbles into his shoulder. Was the kid always this tall? Or maybe he was always this short, he can’t remember. “You did it…,” he repeats, sounding a little dumbstruck.

“We sure did,” Tony chuckles, remembering how he nearly drew Bruce and Scott to insanity during their shared lab time.

They stay like that for a while, barely aware of what’s going on around them – the Guardians reuniting in a massive team hug, Rhodey chatting up Wilson and Barnes with Rogers just staring at the two in wonder, Thor loitering around Thanos’s corpse with a lost expression that Tony understands only too well…for many people here, this is a bittersweet ending.

The Asgardians that Thanos massacred aren’t coming back. Loki… _probably_ isn’t either. Gamora, who he’s heard so much about from Nebula, is forever lost to the Soul stone. And Wanda looks all kinds of bitter, watching Vision gently hold Nebula in his arms away from the crowds and the former battlefield.

“Go home, Pete. May will be freaking out by now.”

Peter pulls away, smearing the tears and dirt across his face with the palm of his hand. “I’m so grounded,” he laughs and fidgets where he stands, eyes flickering between Tony and the New York skyline.

“Run along now, it’s ok. We’ll talk later, yeah? And don’t worry. May _will_ ground you…but will crumble in seconds. _A_ second, if you go for the pout.”

He chuckles and nods, breaking into a jog in the general direction of Queens.

Tony breathes out and looks around, mentally taking a count of everyone present if only to make sure everyone is here. Everyone that should be…could be.

It doesn’t take him long to realize his math doesn’t add up.

The Avengers – check. The Guardians – check. Two Masters of the Mystic Arts? Gone and gone.

Now Wong was here just moments ago, he’s been fighting alongside them the whole day – the whole year, one might say. Him leaving without as much as a ‘seeya’ doesn’t surprise Tony. It’s not Wong’s style.

What does surprise him is Doctor Strange and his overly loyal outerwear not even stopping by to say…something. Anything.

This was his big plan. Big Plan with a capital P. Surely this was it – this was how they were supposed to win. Even if not, it all worked out.

And the damn wizard doesn’t even have the courtesy to show up for a small talk?!

‘Hey, the weather’s nice today!’ or ‘You sure chopped Thanos up to a lot of pieces!’ or ‘I’m glad it worked!’

Nope.

He just portalled everyone back from Titan and made himself scarce. Fucking _perfect_.

For some reason, it makes Tony seething with anger. The kind he hadn’t felt since the events of Titan sank in and he nearly destroyed the Benatar in his outrage. Or since that conversation he had with Rogers right after returning to Earth. Yeah, that made him all kinds of mad. If he wasn’t a walking corpse at that point, he would have punched the guy, _again_.

And now this asshole wizard who saved his life, saved _all_ their lives and brought Peter and everyone back from Titan decided to just puff! Disappear like some fucking Copperfield wannabie.

That won’t do.

 

* * *

 

 

“What?” Stephen zeroes in on Wong’s frowny bitch-face that by default means he screwed up somehow.

Wong sighs, shaking his head. “Nothing. You look like shit,” he changes the subject and hands him the med kit Stephen asked him for as soon as they returned to the Sanctum.

He nearly didn’t recognize the place. Nobody could blame him – the last time he was here, there was a gigantic hole in the ceiling _and_ the staircase. Wong clearly did some renovating… and this new couch is nice and comfy.

“You don’t look that great either, you know. Fighting Thanos does that to people.”

“Tell me about it. You’re certainly not the first dead-looking person to have returned from Titan recently.”

He winces at that, the all too vivid memory of Tony withering away on that damn spaceship still burning his mind like wildfire.

“Speaking of whom, you could have at least talked to him before running to hide in here.”

“Hide? I’m not hiding!” he argues even though yes, that’s exactly what he did. Not that Wong needs to…wait, he does know that. How does Wong know?! Since when does he see through him like this?!

“Yes. You are. And I don’t know what you saw when you used the Time stone, exactly, but obviously you didn’t look this far into the future,” Wong smirks. _Smirks_.

“Look. I know more than a year went by for you, but for me? It was like twenty minutes! Me fighting Thanos? That was half an hour ago! I didn’t come here to hide, I’m tired and hurt. I don’t have the time to go…what? Talk about the weather with Stark?!”

“What are you, English?” Wong rolls his eyes and that unsettling smirk of his turns straight up _dangerous._ “Just so you know? Tony spent about every other day in here. Those fun barriers we enact to stop people from accidentally stumbling inside? Those won’t stop him anymore. He’s on the official guest list.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?!”

“Means that he knows where you live, idiot. And he’ll be breaking through these doors any second now.”

“Pffft. That’s ridiculous. He’s got plenty more to care about right now than - ”

“Aaaaaaany second now,” Wong sings.

“Wong, you’re - ”

Just then, _the doors break open_. Not just _open_ like someone used the handle and pushed them open. No, they _burst_ open like someone kicked them with a force of a powerful iron suit of armor.

Which is exactly what happened.

“Aaaaand here we go. I’m gonna get the tea,” Wong nods at the intruder and starts walking back up the stairs.

“What are you, English?! Get me some coffee and don’t even argue, Beyoncé!” Tony stomps through the splintered mess of wood that used to be the Sanctum’s doors, the armor dissolving around him.

“Fine!” Wong calls back and doesn’t even sound mad about it.

What the…?!

“And you!” Tony turns to him then and walks up to his slumped form on the couch like _all five_ riders of the apocalypse.

Dormammu was scary and all…but there’s something about that unbridled fury in Tony’s eyes that is making Stephen re-evaluate the term _scary_.

“What are _you_ doing here?!” he stops in front of him, hands on his hips and that fiery gaze going up and down, inspecting every detail of Stephen’s being.

Stephen shakes his head and regains some of his composure…and balls…and squints up at the mad engineer. “What am _I_ doing here?! I am the Master of this Sanctum! What are _you_ doing here?!” he folds his still shaky hands defensively against his chest.

“Nah-uh. You don’t get to talk back at me, Master Asshole! We just saved the fucking universe and you don’t even have the decency to show up so we can make sure your wizard ass is alright?! Look at you!” he wildly flails, pointing at Stephen. “You’re bleeding all over the place! That’s it. We’re going to the hospital!” he commands, tapping his feet expectantly against the wooden floor.

“I’m fine! Don’t you have a - ”

“No, this is where you zip it, wizard!” he yells and Stephen reels back, blinking.

This isn’t one of their playful banters nor one of their silly annoying arguments…and they’ve had plenty of those for Stephen to tell the difference. Fourteen million of those and then some.

This was Tony Stark at his absolute angriest. Here, in the Sanctum, after defeating the greatest threat to the universe in millennia. He should be partying it up with the Avengers and the Guardians and Peter…and instead he broke down the doors to Stephen’s perfect hideout and looks like fury personified.

 _Because of Stephen_.

“Look,” Tony takes a breath, running a hand over his exhausted face and Stephen and his resolve crumbles.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, disrupting whatever Tony was about to say.

“Good. Now can we please get to that hospital? I sure hope you weren’t about to do the patching up yourself there,” he glares at the first aid kit.

“Doctor Strange isn’t my superhero name, you know? I’m an actual - ”

“Idiot. Yes. With a degree in neurosurgery. Which would be very handy if there was something wrong with your head – and there’s plenty, just not fixable with surgery.”

“It’s just few cuts and bruises, I can handle that.”

“Unbelievable,” he rolls his eyes. “Someone who’s _actually_ worse at being a patient than me. Guess it’s true about what they say…doctors _are_ the worst patients.”

“It’s not doctors, it’s just me,” he shrugs, only slightly surprising himself with the admission.

The tension leaves Tony’s features and the hardened expression softens into a lot less anger and a lot more…something. Relief? Worry? Both?

“We did it, doc,” he says, barely a whisper and there’s so much going on in those two hazel eyes that it almost makes Stephen’s head spin.

“ _You_ did it,” Stephen corrects him because this, this is all him. Of course he had help…Bruce, Lang, Nebula and even Wong. But no amount of help would be enough _without Tony_.

And he would know. He saw. He remembers.

“Can’t take all the credit.”

“But you should.”

“ _You_ should take credit where it’s due. We’d be toast without you.”

“Oh well, if you say so then yes. It was all me. I’ll be accepting gift baskets come Monday,” he rolls his eyes and feels an almost unfamiliar tug at his lips. Like…a smile.

What a terrifying concept.

“It _is_ Monday. Now, let me help you with this,” he snatches the kit from his lap and sits down on the couch.

“You don’t - ”

“But I am, so sit back and _let me do this_. I suck at gift baskets anyway so…consider it my way of saying thank you. For protecting this reality, asshole.”

“It’s not fair.”

“What?” Tony frowns.

“I…couldn’t help you. After Titan,” he adds, eyes wondering away from that soft gaze of the man he knows so well it _scares_ him.

“So what? Is this a fucking competition now? I mean…I’m all for competitions. I’m sure we can set something up – after we all get a good night’s sleep.”

“Hm. What do you have in mind, Tony?”

He smiles, just a tiny, almost shy tug of lips. “Right now? I’m thinking where the hell is that coffee, Wong?!” he calls into the silence of the Sanctum, startling a chuckle out of Stephen.

“Wong makes the worst coffee, it’s probably for the best. Me on the other hand, I am a Master of brewing the perfect cup of coffee.”

“See? Now _that_ sounds like a competition right there. Let’s see…tomorrow morning, bright and early, Compound kitchen. You versus my state-of-the-art AI operated coffee machine?”

“I’ll take your silly machine on, no problem.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, go on talking big, just wait till you taste that perfection!”

“Can’t wait to see your face when you taste mine, I wasn’t kidding. It’s the definition of _divine_.”

“Reeeeally, hm. We’ll see…Stephen. We’ll see.”

 

It’s not how either of them expected to meet after such a long and yet such a short time – the anger, the relief, the easy and calming banter.

But that epic competition of coffee-making it resulted in the next day was definitely worth it. As well as all the days and competitions and…not so well disguised dates slash competitions that followed.

 ~


End file.
